Lea Bondi

Lea Bondi , later Lea Jaray or Lea Bondi-Jaray ( December 12, 1880 in Mainz - 1969 in London ) was an Austrian gallery owner and art collector who was forced to emigrate to Great Britain after the " annexation of Austria " to the National Socialist German Reich . The Würthle gallery that she ran was " Aryanized ". She also worked as a gallery owner while in exile in London. She took British citizenship in 1948 .

She gained notoriety posthumously as the owner of the painting Wally by Egon Schiele , which was squeezed from her in the course of the "Aryanization" and never returned.

biography

family

Lea Bondi was born into a German-Jewish merchant family in Mainz who moved to Vienna in the mid-1880s. The parents were Marcus Bondi (1831-1926) and Bertha geb. Hirsch (1842-1912). She had 16 siblings, eight brothers, eight sisters.

In 1936 she married the sculptor Alexander Sándor Járay (1870–1943) from Temešvár , her long-term companion, after his first wife died. After their marriage, she was named Lea Jaray. In publications after her death, she is referred to as Lea Bondi-Jaray.

Gallery owner in Vienna

On June 6, 1919, Lea Bondi was entered in the Vienna Commercial Register as authorized signatory of the Würthle & Sohn Successor , known as Kunsthandlung Würthle or later as Galerie Würthle . In the following year, the business was expanded and the company name was given the addition of Verlag Neuer Graphik . On June 22, 1920, Otto Nirenstein (1894–1978), who later became known as Otto Kallir, also received individual procuration . The aim of the company expansion was to publish contemporary and modern original graphics from Austria. Works by Faistauer , Itten , Jungnickel , Kubin and, posthumously, by Schiele have been published. Nirenstein's power of attorney was canceled on May 26, 1922. Bondi became an open partner in the company. In 1926, the owners Leopoldine and Ulf Seidl (1881–1960) resigned ; on August 13, 1926, Bondi became the sole owner of the art dealership. According to the database of Jewish collectors and art dealers , the manufacturer and collector Otto Brill (1881–1954) is said to have been a partner.

Lea Bondi not only traded in works of art, she also collected privately. For example, in the mid-1920s she acquired the painting Walburga Neuzil , known as Wally , from Egon Schiele . She herself has been portrayed several times, including 1927 by Christian Schad in oil on wood.

Aryanization, robbery, emigration

Portrait of Walburga Neuzil , called Wally , by Egon Schiele , 1912

There are no original sources about the Aryanization of the Würthle Gallery by the Salzburg art dealer Friedrich Welz , because - as emerged on the occasion of allegations of fraud against Welz in 1943 - according to Welz "no written contract had been concluded [...] - only in its place a memory log that Welz keeps at the disposal of the tax office. ". It is also not clear how much of the agreed purchase price of RM 13,500 was actually paid. The procedure was largely informal, as an agreement between Bondi-Jaray and Welz, largely bypassing the authorities. The fact is that Lea Bondi-Jaray always emphasized two things, even after the Nazi regime, that Welz unscrupulously endeavored to keep the already low selling price lower and that he extorted the painting Wally from her without ever paying any financial compensation numbers. Following the Aryanization of the Würthle Gallery, Friedrich Welz finally visited the gallery owner in her married apartment in the third district of Vienna. Schiele's Wally hung in the house at Weißgerberlände 38, directly on the Danube Canal . It was the day before the planned departure for London, March 17, 1939. Welz immediately recognized the value of the painting and asked for it, as well as a piece of furniture. Lea Bondi-Jaray made it clear that it had been her private property for many years and that the picture neither belonged to Galerie Würthle nor was it for sale. Welz insisted until the gallery owner's husband acted on her not to risk the planned escape.

Fate of family members

Four sisters and one brother were murdered in the Shoah , Rosa Gradenwitz and Helene Hausdorff in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp , the unmarried twin sisters Hilda and Hinda Bondi in the Izbica ghetto and Siegmund Bondi in the final days of the Nazi regime in 1945 in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp . Three brothers escaped in time, Joseph to New York, Hugo Naftali to Palestine and Samuel Bondi, an internist, to an unknown location.

Gallery owner in London

In 1939 she fled to London with her husband. She could only take with her what she could carry, including a number of drawings, and certainly some sheets by Egon Schiele. She lived in Hampstead and dealt in works by emigrated Austrians. Her husband died in London on July 5, 1943. In the same year, she and Otto Brill, who had also managed to escape to London, took over St. George's Gallery at 81 Grosvenor Street in Mayfair . The previous owner was Arthur Rowland Howell (1881–1956), who had sold works by contemporary English artists such as Frances Hodgkins and David Jones there. In addition to graphics, there were new and used books to buy on all areas of art, theater, and music. The gallery quickly became a point of contact for German-speaking emigrants and gave some of them work, such as Erica Brausen and Harry Fischer , who later both founded well-known galleries in London. Lea Jaray presented contemporary artists of various styles, including Massimo Campigli , Lucian Freud , Alberto Giacometti , Oskar Kokoschka , André Masson , Ceri Richards and others. She was one of the first to show expressionist works in London , an area in which she had a high level of expertise. In 1947 the gallery was sponsored by the British Council for exhibitions of British and French artists of the new generation. Lea Jaray became a British citizen in April 1948 . In 1950 she showed her Contemporary Austrian Painters gallery in cooperation with the Albertina and the Federal Ministry for Education, which is responsible for culture . After that, the gallery was closed due to a lack of profitability. Agatha Sadler , Otto Brill's younger daughter, who was in charge of the book range, secured the name and, after a long period of building work at various addresses, was able to set up a later famous book shop, St. George's Gallery Books Ltd.

The British art critic William Feaver wrote of Lea Jaray: “In her London gallery she presented international artists,“ Known and Unknown ”, as the title of a group exhibition in which Lucian Freud was represented. The artist paid her high praise: "She really loved art." "

restitution

From 1945 the long-time employee Luise Kremlacek was provisional director of the gallery . After a decision by the Austrian Restitution Commission on March 17, 1948, Friedrich Welz had to return the "Galerie Würthle" to Lea Bondi-Jaray. Welz then claimed expenses for the gallery. So it came to a second hearing, which was decided in favor of the "Ariseur". To get their company back, Bondi-Jaray had to pay him 9,000 shillings . The gallery's collection, including 47 works of art by Anton Kolig , as well as the Schiele painting “ Wally ” from 1912, whose legal owner was Lea Bondi-Jaray, were considered lost.

When she asked, Welz reported that Schiele's painting had been confiscated along with other works of art and was in the Belvedere's collections . Since Bondi-Jaray had to go back to London, she could not attend to the matter further. In 1953 she was visited in London by the doctor and collector Rudolf Leopold , with whom she also spoke about the picture of "Wally". She asked him to endeavor to return it. The next thing she heard about the picture was that it was in Leopold's possession. In 1957 she asked the collector, through a lawyer, to return the painting to her. Leopold replied that she no longer had any ownership rights to the painting because she had failed to reclaim it from the Belvedere. The picture now belongs to him. The attorney's answer was that Bondi-Jaray had never given up her claims to the picture and that Wally had only come into the possession of the Rieger heirs through a mix-up and from there to the Belvedere. The lawyer recommended a lawsuit, but Lea Bondi-Jaray refuses because she did not trust the Austrian judiciary. She wrote to the lawyer: "if the lawsuit is lost, I have lost my picture forever." [If the trial is lost, I will have lost my painting forever.]

In August 1966 she asked Otto Kallir , Schiele expert and gallery owner in Manhattan, also an emigrant from Vienna, for help. In a letter to him written in German, she described how Welz's picture had been pressed from her. Lea Bondi-Jaray tried to have the painting restituted until her death. She died without receiving it or receiving any compensation for it.

The painting was confiscated 29 years after her death at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where it was shown on loan, and was subsequently in state custody for more than ten years as the subject of legal disputes between Bondi-Jaray's heirs and the collector Rudolf Leopold . After the collector's death, the Leopold Museum paid $ 19 million and the painting returned to Vienna.

→ Main article : Wally (Schiele) #Provenance

Web links

• Analysis of Lea Bondi Jaray Case by Rafael Ramos (Historical Society of the New York Courts)

Individual proof

1. ↑ Jaray Lea, b. Bondi, married Jaray; Gallery owner . In: Ilse Korotin (Ed.): BiografiA. Lexicon of Austrian Women . Volume 2 I – O, Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2016, ISBN 978-3-205-79590-2 , p. 1480 ( Open library pdf p. 66 )
2. ↑ The Jeitteles-Jaray-Family: Exodus , accessed January 19, 2020
3. ^ ^{A b c} Sonja Niederacher: Dossier on Egon Schiele "Moa", 1911 LM Inv. No. 2310 , ed. from the Museum Leopold and the Federal Chancellery of the Republic of Austria, December 21, 2014. PDF p. 5 ff
4. ↑ Stefania Domanova, Georg Hupfer: "Aryanization" using the example of the companies Halm & Goldmann and Verlag Neuer Graphik (Würthle & Sohn Nachf.) , Accessed on January 26, 2020
5. ^ German Loss of Cultural Property Center : Brill, Otto , in the database of Jewish collectors and art dealers (victims of National Socialist persecution and expropriation) , accessed on January 19, 2020
6. ↑ This painting has been in the collection of the Museum Moderner Kunst (mumok) in Vienna since 1965 . See his website: Lea Bondi , with a reproduction of the painting, accessed January 19, 2020
7. ↑ Gert Kerschbaumer: Master of Confusion. The business of the art dealer Friedrich Welz , Verlag Czernin, Vienna 2000, ISBN 978-3-7076-0030-8 , p. 35
8. ^ ARCA: Art Crime Documentary: "Portrait of Wally" (Part One) , May 28, 2012
9. ↑ Michael J. Bazyler, Roger P. Alford, Roger P. Alford (eds.): Holocaust Restitution , Perspectives on the Litigation and Its Legacy, NYU Press 2006, p. 281 (Portrait of Wally)
10. ↑ Yad Vashem : Rosa Gradenwitz , accessed January 30, 2020
11. ↑ Yad Vashem : Helene Hausdorff , accessed on January 30, 2020
12. ↑ Yad Vashem : Hilde Fanny Bondi , accessed January 30, 2020
13. ^ Yad Vashem : Siegmund Bondi , accessed January 30, 2020
14. ↑ Memorial book for the victims of National Socialism at the University of Vienna 1938 : Samuel Bondi , accessed on January 26, 2020
15. ↑ National Archives : Naturalization Certificate: Lea Jaray. From Austria. Resident in London. , April 9, 1948
16. ↑ ST. GEORGE'S GALLERY , in: Brave New Vision , The émigrés who transformed the British art world, accessed on February 2, 2020
17. ↑ William Feaver: The Lives of Lucian Freud , The Restless Years, 1922–1968, Knopf Doubleday 2019, 254
18. ↑ Gabriele Anderl, Alexandra Caruso (ed.): Nazi art theft in Austria and the consequences , Studien-Verlag 2005, ISBN 978-3-7065-1956-4 , p. 164 ff.
19. ↑ Bruce L. Hay: Nazi-Looted Art and the Law , The American Cases, Springer 2017, ISBN 978-3-319-64966-5 , pp. 16 and 37
20. ^ New York Times : THE ZEALOUS COLLECTOR; A special report; A Singular Passion For Amassing Art, One Way or Another , article by Judith H. Dobrzynski , December 24, 1997